Guy's Gotta Talk...For the Last Time

I started this blog eleven years ago, a few weeks after my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.

I started it because I couldn't find any other man willing to talk about their experience. So, being me, I started a blog, talking into the wide universe and hoping someone would talk back.

No one ever did, really. I didn't have any kind of celebrity status, no book to sell, and no hospital endorsement...

I got an occasional reply or observation or comment. And that was good enough for me, because something even more important happened: I learned about breast cancer and Alzheimer's -- and I hope others did as well. But after more than a decade, nearly six hundred posts, and over 100,000 views, I'm hanging it up. I'll leave the blog here for a while; eventually close it -- or let it die a natural death.

Why? Well, the first month I wrote, I got (if the Status chart is accurate!) about 60 views. Last month, I got...a hair over a hundred and fifty last month.

At the height of the blog, which was November 2018, I was sharing my thoughts about both breast cancer and Alzheimer's and something like 2700 people stopped by the site each month, long enough to be counted -- or long enough to read what they were interested in.

Dad's diagnosis of Alzheimer's several years before he started to show obvious signs of AD launched me into a new line of research, and I found those people willing to talk about AD about as chatty as the ones who had thoughts about breast cancer.

But as the months and years have passed, so has FaceBook and EBlogger. Shorter, more interactive sites -- TikTok, Instagram, YouTube (my grandson expects NOT to have to go to college as he will be a popular YouTuber... 8-/ ) have taken over and can give fast, less-thoughtful answers than my blog. The service I provided -- like Translating The Doctors; AD and BC Research RIGHT NOW!; Encouragement; and recently, ancillary issues related to both AD and BC -- don't appear to be needed anymore as time has become more and more of the essence, and people don't really WANT to talk about BC or Alzheimer's.

So -- explore the site, and for a while the features that are RIGHT NOW! should remain fairly pertinent. But, as time passes, they'll grow out of date, and eventually, EBlogger itself will wither, die, and vanish.

I've thought of printing everything off, but that wouldn't be helpful to anyone -- except maybe Posterity. My grandkids might be interested in reading the posts, but that seems unlikely -- I rarely look at pictures of my parents any more and can't imagine the science will hold up well in another eleven years...2033?

WHOA! In the meantime, I hope my brief time here was helpful to you --whether as a comfort, a resource, or just simply to read and know that treatments and the horror of Breast Cancer and Alzheimer's have come a long way...

Thanks for reading -- some of you through the YEARS...farewell.

Image: https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/farewell-written-sand-fading-flood-78677870.jpg

ENCORE #186! – Lumps. Bumps. Divots. Scars.

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer in March of 2011, there was a deafening silence from the men I knew. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer seemed to have received a gag order from some Central Cancer Command and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…That was four years ago – as time passed, people searching for answers stumbled across my blog and checked out what I had to say. The following entry first appeared in March of 2015…

I have a divot in my forehead.

My wife has a divot in her side. Both sides, actually.

Breast cancer – skin cancer in my own experience – is all about divots.

Define divot (plural divots)
1.A torn up piece of turf (e.g. by a golf club in making a stroke or by a horse's hoof).
2.A disruption in an otherwise smooth contour.

It’s the second definition that concerns me here.

After discovery and confirmation four years ago this week, the breast cancer specialists we were working with looked at several options. One of them, used in cases where the cancer was discovered early and was small, is called a “lumpectomy”. In this procedure (I was just struck this MOMENT by the sterility of this word. It sounds so clean and simple. Like when I did “cookbook labs” as a science teacher. It involved steps students would follow to achieve a very specific result. For lots of kids, it involved reading and rereading the procedure, their finger under the step they were following so they could get it “right”. Lumpectomies are nowhere NEAR this simple and involve invasive methods that deform the breast...) “Lumpectomy is the removal of the breast tumor (the "lump") and some of the normal tissue that surrounds it.

Lumpectomy is a form of “breast-conserving” or "breast preservation" surgery. There are several names used for breast-conserving surgery: biopsy, lumpectomy, partial mastectomy, re-excision, quadrantectomy, or wedge resection. Technically, a lumpectomy is a partial mastectomy, because part of the breast tissue is removed. But the amount of tissue removed can vary greatly. Quadrantectomy, for example, means that roughly a quarter of your breast will be removed. Make sure you have a clear understanding from your surgeon about how much of your breast may be gone after surgery and what kind of scar you will have.”

While this makes an attempt at realism, nothing can quite convey the results but a person who experienced it.

My wife had a double mastectomy which is the most extreme form of breast cancer surgery possible.

I can NEVER know what that’s like. I can only imagine it.

Since my own skin cancer surgery, I’ve had a tiny, non-life-threatening taste of what it might possibly feel like to have a lumpectomy. One of the cancers on my face was on my forehead. Using the Mohs procedure (described here: http://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2014/11/guys-gotta-talk-about-9face-and-breast.html) layers of tissue that have cancer cells are removed, tested, then the incision is either closed or another layer of cells are removed and tested. The end result, after healing and recovery, has been a “divot” in my forehead. Touching it right now, I can ASSURE you that it is gigantic and I’m positive everyone sees it but out of politeness, ignores it.

Right. I work in a high school. Politeness is something we work on in our kids every day because about half of them have never experienced it at home. If anyone noticed a divot in my forehead, they’d tell me. Ergo: it’s not noticeable.

My wife had me look at a small lump on her left side, asking, “Is this one of the places that the drains went in?” A matched spot above it confirmed that it is, indeed, the place where one of the drains exited the surgical field four years ago. She also has a scar where the port was placed in order to do chemotherapy.

Lumps. Bumps. Divots. Scars.

These are clearly the legacy of breast cancer – of any kind of cancer. I’m sure plastic surgery could clear up many of them, yet I feel no compulsion at all to GET the surgery. I wonder why...

Sorry for the rambling commentary. But that’s where I’m at today...

Image: https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5527/10893068965_1d328e8f71_b.jpg